It's that after years of negotiations at the highest levels, all around the Pacific Rim, on a major agreement to overhaul Pacific trade agreements and intellectual property rules, nobody knows anything about it.

"I think," muses Wyden, "that the administration thinks that when congresspeople ask questions about secrecy, they can just assume that the congressional attention span is like a tsetse fly, and they can move on."

This is particularly true, he suggests, about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which a number of people outside Congress are asking questions about -- if they've heard of it.

"The problem with TPP is we really don't know the policy on intellectual property," says Mira Sutton, international outreach coordinator at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based advocacy group with a mission of "working to protect fundamental rights regardless of technology," in courts and public debate.

In fact, Sutton points out, "We really don't know any part of it."

Which tends to raise people's suspicions.

Last year, the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect Intellectual Property Act would have created vast powers to shut down and penalize websites charged with violating copyright. In a struggle between Hollywood and Silicon Valley, Wyden was a leader in the congressional resistance that unexpectedly derailed what was supposed to be a Hollywood ending. Now, high-tech advocates suspect that the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement includes an international end run around Congress to win in Melbourne what couldn't be won on Capitol Hill.

"The TPP will rewrite the global rules on (intellectual property) enforcement," warns the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "All signatory countries will be required to conform their domestic laws and policies to the provisions of the agreement."

What might those provisions be?

Well, nobody knows.

At a recent Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiation in Los Angeles, with the United States represented by the office of the U.S. trade representative, high-tech advocates appeared, but nobody would talk to them. In fact, their hotel reservations somehow got cancelled.

"No one is allowed to understand the implications of this international agreement," warns Sutton, "that would affect millions of lives."

Governments in general tend to prefer secrecy and controls over information, while the Internet thrives as an uncontrolled place. Aside from the prospect of imposing limits and penalties in the United States that could never get through Congress, there are concerns about how the rules might be used by potential future members of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, specifically one very large country that has already shown a different attitude toward Internet freedom and access.

"Internationally," blogger Greg Melus warned last month on the Intellectual Property Brief web site, "critics are afraid that absent the domestic protections of fair use and free speech, member countries could curtail free speech and hinder the creation of democratic societies."

The Obama administration's tendency to keep things as close as possible doesn't provide universal reassurance. Last fall, the administration signed the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which raised some of the same intellectual questions. The agreement has now been signed by 31 countries, including the European Union, but the Obama administration insists that ACTA is not a treaty but an executive agreement, and does not require congressional approval.

Complained Wyden, "When international accords, like ACTA, are conceived and constructed under a cloak of secrecy, it is hard to argue that they represent the broad interests of the general public."

It's one reason why, the senator thinks, the Obama administration's "hold on some of its secrecy issues will be increasingly subject to criticism from all sides."

Of course, that's less of a problem when no one knows what's going on.

David Sarasohn, associate editor, can be reached at 503-221-8523 or dsarasohn@oregonian.com. See other writing at oregonlive.com/sarasohn